Blinder than oak-trees in the wind
Endlessly weaving sighs into a poem
To sight,
He sits, the light of one pale purple lantern
Seeping into his dream-hollowed face,
Like floating, transparent words
Pale with unuttered meanings.
He mends a flute and sighs as though
Its shadow leaned heavily upon his heart
And told him things his dead eyes could not grasp.
The dust of many roads has been my grey wine.
Surprised beech-trees have bowed
With me, to the plodding morning
Humming tunes frail as webs of dead perfume,
To his love in golden silks, the departed moon.
Maidens like rose-flooded statues
Have bathed me in the wine of their silence.
But now I walk on, alone.
And only after watching many evenings,
Do I dance a bit with dying wisps of moon-light,
To persuade myself that I am young.
The ruins of your face were twined with youth.
Vines of starlight questioned your face when you smiled.
Your eyes dissolved over distances
And steeped the graves of many loves.
Night was kind to your body:
The careless vehemence of curves
Softened beneath your darkly-loosened dress.
And your heart toyed with an emotion
That left you vague hunger poised over death.
Your mind is a little, clandestine pastel
Shaped into a posture of rigid grief.
Its colors huddle together
And make a stunted, aching lyric....
Ah frail-flowered moment preceding reality--
Your eyelids open; the little pastel dies.
Upon an arched sarcophagus of pain
Are figures painted in arrested embraces
With outlines so light that we must bend close to see:
Old loves almost merging to one tone
Of pale regret that holds
An inner glow of dead weeping.
Our lips cling and our breath winds to a hand
With touch like summer rain
Blending the arrested figures upon the arched sarcophagus of pain.
Sometimes jaded, sometimes tranquil,
Your eyes invade the tumult of your face.
Your lips are the remnants of a love
That made a sunset-cup of your face.
The movements of your body
Caress the couch you sit on into sound
That seems to answer your words.
You are restless because upon this couch
The cold touch of your lover lies
And seeps into you, reaching your heart.
Twilight pushes down your eyes
With shimmering, pregnant fingers
That leave you covered with still-born touch.
With little whips of dead words
Silence cuts your lips to a keener red.
Your heart strikes its bed of dark mirth, in death,
And your hands lie over it, guarding the corpse.
Night will soon whisk away this room
But you are already invisible.
With crafty brooding life turned to Jack Rose
And made him heroin-peddler, and his pose
Was sullenly reflective since he feared
That life, regarding him, had merely jeered.
His vanity was small and could not call
His egoism to the dubious hall
Of fame, where average artists spend their hour.
Doubting his powers he was forced to cower
Within the shrill, damp alleys of his time,
Immersed in that brisk midnight known as crime.
He shunned the fiercely shrewd stuff that he sold
To other people, and derived a cold
Enjoyment from the writhing of their hearts.
A speechless artist, he admired the arts
Of blundering destruction, like a monk
Viewing a play that made him mildly drunk.
This street is callous apathy
In a scale of greys and browns.
Its black roof-line suggests
Flat bodies unable to rise.
Even its screams are listlessness
Having an evil dream.
Its air is swarthy rawness
Troubled with ash cans and cellars.
An old woman ambles on
With a black bag that seems part of her back,
And a candidly hawk-like face.
She croons a smothered lullaby
That sifts a flitting roundness
Into her sharply parted face.
Then she surrenders her hand
To the welter of a garbage can.
Poor little traveller, lost in night!
God made a miracle, I know,
To give you life — tears and delight,
And ecstasy and ancient woe.
Yet barefoot in the snow you stand,
Beseeching bread with shaking hand.
Poor baby, with your wistful face!
When you are grown a man, and tall,
You'll have the kingly, simple grace,
The smile that makes a festival.
Yet from the dark your hungry eyes
Behold the cook-shop’s paradise.
An old, old couple in a blossoming garden. . . .
Love, inarticulate, nestles close between them.
And the old woman and the old man.
And Love,
Sit watching fireflies. . . .
Tiny torches flashing with pale, green light
In the heavy white dew.
Oh roses. . .roses. . .roses. . .cease your blossoming!
Kind crystal dew
Put out the firefly torches
Before they light the little paths to sorrow. . . .
Earth is too beautiful. . . .
And the man and the woman are old, so old,
And tired.
Now they sit quietly with calm, closed eyes. . . .
Only Love, nestled close between them,
The night that wee Francesca died
The little night wind sighed and sighed.
Chill and dew-laden it crept in.
Beneath her tiny hands, so thin,
I laid some little friendly flowers
That saw her laugh in sunshine hours.
She loved those pansy faces best,
Wise-eyed they went with her to rest.
The trees looked very dark and old,
The stars gleamed so far off and cold.
Only the little night wind sighed
The night that wee Francesca died.